


if not for all time

by Crowmunculus



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M, No. 6 Secret Santa 2019, Post-Canon, post-reunion, the boys try to keep it angsty but my hopelessly romantic nature comes through in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowmunculus/pseuds/Crowmunculus
Summary: Nezumi can leave at any time.No. 6 Secret Santa 2019 gift for bucket-of-nope on tumblr.
Relationships: Nezumi/Shion (No. 6)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	if not for all time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [bucket-of-nope](https://bucket-of-nope.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for the 2019 [No. 6 Secret Santa!](https://no6secretsanta.tumblr.com/)

Nezumi can leave at any time. It’s not just an empty platitude he tells himself to calm the claustrophobic panic that wells up whenever he catches himself relaxing within the confines of these four walls, here in an apartment in the wicked heart of No. 6. Shion still leaves the bedroom window cracked at night, the front door deadbolt unlocked during the day. He has to know it drives Nezumi crazy - he’s not the only criminal who can pick locks or scale two stories to climb onto a balcony - but five years on and Shion is as stubborn as he ever was, and he’s proving a point. 

Nezumi can leave at any time, and he _has_ left, storming out in the middle of a fight, leaving with the intent to leave for good when Shion is at work and not there to watch with sad eyes, in the early hours between midnight and dawn when he slips out the window and paces the neighborhood enraged at his own cowardice. Shion is never angry at him when he returns. He only smiles, kisses Nezumi’s cheek, and continues wherever they left off.

Something always pulls Nezumi back. There has always been something tethering him to Shion, since that first night when they were children. He couldn’t break it, so he tried to run from it; he couldn’t outrun it, so all that was left to him was to face it. If he fulfilled his promise of reunion, ensured Shion and the city had not strayed from their path, then he could leave, then he would be free. So the theory went.

Shion is a lighter sleeper now than he had been as a teenager. Nezumi is as delicate as he knows how to be as he escapes the secure hold of Shion’s arms and leaves their bed, but as he’s lacing his boots he hears “Let me come with you.”

“You can’t,” Nezumi says, irritated - mostly at himself. “I’m going out the window and I don’t trust that His Majesty can climb down the castle walls without breaking his royal neck.” He finishes dressing with a warm coat over his sleep shirt and doesn’t mean to look back at Shion before he leaves but he does, and Shion is smiling at him. 

“You’re stealing my coat?” Shion asks, all innocence save for the mischievous curl of his smile. Nezumi grabs at a sleeve and realizes, mortified, that it’s Shion’s coat, it’s the old threadbare coat he’d worn in the West Block, well-loved and still used years later. No wonder it’s so tight around his shoulders. 

“It’s warm,” he mutters, and can say nothing to protest when Shion puts on Nezumi’s winter coat in turn.

They leave out the front door, locked behind them. Nezumi can see the slight gap between their open bedroom window and the sill from the street even in the low pre-dawn light. Shion walks close beside him, matching his long strides with ease now that they are nearly the same height. Their hands brush as they walk until Nezumi jerks his away. Shion’s hand closes into a fist.

“Talk to me,” Shion says. He doesn’t sound angry, only hurt, which is worse. 

“What do you want me to say?” What is he supposed to say, how is he supposed to explain when he can’t even explain it to himself? He’d thought revenge would bring him peace, but it only left him filled with directionless rage. And then he’d thought leaving would bring him peace, but the entire time he was gone he’d missed Shion so fiercely that his absence was a physical ache. And now that he was with Shion again, and they were happy, all of his instincts screamed at him to leave.

“Are you happy here?” Shion says, and Nezumi hears _Are you happy with me?_

“It’s not a question of happiness,” Nezumi says. Even when he’s happy the anger is still there roiling below the surface, an ever-present poison threatening to spill over.

Shion reaches for his hand again and this time Nezumi lets him. 

Mist hangs low in the street, gray-on-gray in the early dregs of sunrise that make it through the thick layer of clouds. Their breaths come out as mist, too, their breathing the only sound in the morning stillness. No one else is outside, no one else is awake, and Nezumi thinks that maybe he could live here if this city was always like this.

They pass by Mr. Watanabe’s house on the corner of their block. He’ll be on the porch soon, faithful as clockwork, drinking coffee as he does every morning when the first infant rays of daylight break the horizon. His wife used to join him but she’d died two years ago. He keeps two chairs on the porch still and always waves at Nezumi when he walks past, smiling at him whether or not Nezumi waves back.

He knows the names and faces of every neighbor on this stupid street because Shion knows them and Shion ensured that he did too. Shion’s love for this city is palpable. It was easier not knowing. Nezumi can’t forget, now that he knows. 

“I don’t want to hold you back,” Shion says with a stiff, rehearsed quality to his voice that Nezumi hates.

“You never have. It isn’t you.” It _is_ Shion, but not the way that Shion thinks. Shion’s done nothing wrong, it’s Nezumi who can’t get it right no matter what he tries. When he was traveling alone between the cities the angry static in his body stretched to fill the open spaces and made him feel small, helpless, exposed. With space for it to go everywhere, there was still nowhere for the anger to go. In the city he has to cage it inside himself and still he is too small to hold all of it.

The rhythm of boots on concrete is soothing in its familiarity. Nezumi can’t count how many times he’s walked this circuit in the weeks since his return. It’s strange, Shion being there with him. His hand held in Nezumi’s is cold and Nezumi is uncomfortably reminded of all the warm air in their bedroom escaping out the open window at that moment. 

“I know it’s not me,” Shion says at length. “Not entirely, at least. It’s something I thought about a lot when you were gone, if there was anything I could have done differently, if I’d been braver or more honest…could I have made you stay?” He grins, adds, “As if I can _make_ you do anything. I can’t even get you to put your dirty clothes in the hamper instead of all over the floor.”

“Nothing you could have done or said would have stopped me,” Nezumi says, “I was always going to leave once No. 6 was destroyed.” _I wasn’t going to come back_ , he doesn’t say.

He’d planned it for years: if he won, if he watched the city burn, he would leave and travel freely with no attachments, no burdens, no grief. If he failed, he’d die young. Either way he would die alone.

“That’s the conclusion I came to,” Shion says. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d done anything differently if you were going to leave anyway. I had to accept that I couldn’t control you, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. I only want you here if you want to be here.”

Nezumi doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t have the same capacity for goodwill towards the city that Shion somehow manages, despite everything and everyone it took from them. Shion’s ability to forgive and move on still amazes him. He doesn’t want to stay in No. 6 longer than he has to, but-

Nothing and no one is like Shion, nowhere else, the whole world over. He’s never slept as well as he does in Shion’s bed, in Shion’s arms. Their little apartment is cluttered with books and soft blankets and a kitchen always well-stocked with fresh baked bread and pastries from Shion’s mama. In such a short time Shion has fit Nezumi into his life so thoroughly, with such great care, that if he left it would shred through the foundation like fire through dry underbrush, like bullets through a crowd. Like when he left five years before.

Shion stops walking, Nezumi so distracted he almost runs Shion over before he realizes they’ve circled around the block all the way back home, where his feet always lead him.

Once they’re back inside Shion heads directly for the coffee maker. Nezumi also gives up on getting back to sleep, if Shion won’t be in bed with him, and follows him to the kitchen. There’s two mismatched chairs at the table that have both been there longer than Nezumi has been back in the city - how many mornings has Shion sat there alone?

“I thought you’d be angrier at me,” Nezumi blurts. He would be, if he’d been the one left behind. He had been, screaming and raging and cursing the unfairness of whatever cruel gift of fate had spared his life in the fire but left him alone. 

“I _was_ angry,” Shion says, back to Nezumi as he carefully measures out enough ground coffee for two. “It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t bring you back and it didn’t bring Safu back. All it did was make me miserable. And I -" His shoulders tense, “I didn’t want to be angry at you when you came back because for however long I get to have you here, I want us to be happy. I love you. I can’t stop you from leaving, if that’s what you choose, but I’d rather spend my time with you loving you than being angry about things I can’t change.”

If Nezumi was braver, he’d tell Shion now: I love you too. He always has. Why else would he come back? But Shion has always outclassed him in courage, so instead he closes Shion into a hug, the transparent pain in his expression hidden against Shion’s hair. Shion tenses more, at first, then slowly relaxes, slowly exhales. His hands move to cover Nezumi’s where they rest over his heart.

Outside the sun has risen. The rest of the city is waking up. They take their coffee with them to bed and sit there together in the watery sunlight. Shion falls back asleep with his head in Nezumi’s lap and Nezumi lets himself relax, for once, into the feeling of loving and being loved.

The window is still open. Nezumi can leave at any time.

And he can always come back.


End file.
